2024 USTA Eastern Organization of the Year: Rockland Community Tennis Association

Interested in how exactly tennis can transform lives? J. Calungcagin—one of the founders of the Rockland Community Tennis Association (RCTA), USTA Eastern’s 2024 Organization of the Year—has a story to share.

“I’m an elementary school teacher by day, and a student from my school came out to try tennis at one of our first summer camps,” he recalls. “She was quiet, very introverted, very shy. She was whiffing the ball. I thought, ‘She’s not going to come back. She’s going to be so discouraged.’”

Calungcagin didn’t need to worry. Turns out he’d concocted precisely the right instructional formula—one-third academic, two-thirds fun, he says—to maintain her interest, because she did keep coming back. She wanted to learn. She wanted to get better. Recently, three years after whiffing balls at that first session, she earned a spot on her high school’s varsity tennis team.

“She loves the game, and she cares about practice,” Calungcagin says. “Her mom planned this Caribbean cruise, and she told her mom, ‘No, we can’t go that week, I have tryouts, I have practice.’ You're looking at a kid who otherwise would've never touched a racquet. And if our program had been one of those hard, drill-based programs, she definitely would've been turned off. But now she has tennis for the rest of her life. And her confidence now…it’s just different. It does something for kids when they can become an expert at a passion of theirs.”

Around the same time, the RCTA worked with USTA Eastern to bring afterschool programming to Suffern Central Schools in Suffern. The district had already integrated tennis into the physical education curriculum at its six elementary schools but hoped to offer interested students more opportunities beyond one classroom unit. Calungcagin, Zaide and their team of instructors spread out and set up nets at each of the elementary school gyms (and later on the blacktop in the spring). A whopping 150 children—around 30 per school—showed up to play. In the end, the RCTA provided more than 100 hours of lessons among the six schools.

Suffern, though, was only the beginning. The RCTA has since replicated the same model across 14 additional elementary schools in Nyack, North Rockland and Orangeburg. What excites Calungcagin and Zaide about all these efforts is how much interest in the sport has skyrocketed in their area since they first began. They are, Zaide notes, building an “ecosystem”. He recently held an event at Suffern for sixth graders who had previously participated in RCTA programming and inquired how many of them would consider joining a middle school team. 80 kids expressed interest.

“I am hyper focused on schools because there is [a need] there,” Zaide says. “We go into schools and teach these kids, and then we can funnel them into our weekend program [at the Tappan Zee High School courts]. So by the time they go into high school, it isn’t the first time they’ve ever picked up a racquet.”

Calungcagin says that many of their participants go on to become RCTA volunteers and coaches themselves.

“Not only do we have kids coming in as beginners and turning into intermediate or advanced players, but we also have advanced players progressing and turning into our coaches,” he says. “They’re getting their high school volunteer hours working with the little kids.”

Adds Zaide: “We’ve created a pipeline.”

After just one year, Calungcagin and Zaide have already seen the fruits of this partnership blossom. The Clarkstown North High School girls tennis team—which includes several players who traveled to Cary Leeds—finished their season undefeated, while the Tappan Zee High School boys team went 11-2. They both stress that the teams’ respective coaches deserve much credit for the exemplary records; Calungcagin and Zaide are just happy to have played a part in their overall success. With the support of NYJTL, the RCTA will continue bringing players to the facility in the colder months of 2025 as well. 

Ultimately, Calungcagin and Zaide feel like they’re just getting started. They’ve dipped their toe into the adult programming waters and recently branched out into the adaptive tennis space for players with disabilities. Currently, they are working alongside USTA Eastern to not only procure a reliable indoor location but also to install lighting at the Tappan Zee courts, so that residents don’t have to pack up their racquets at sunset when it is warm enough to play outside. They are dedicated to improving, sustaining and expanding their tennis community for many years to come. That’s why they are so passionate about perfecting the right mix of instruction and fun, and why Zaide is eager to point out that Calungcagin has yet to forget one name of the now hundreds upon hundreds of participants who have signed up for RCTA programming.

“We could have a cooler name,” Zaide says. “But community is the key word. We are Rockland Community Tennis.”